Energy Matter Conversion Corporation
Founded 1985 · Active
Also known as EMC2
Energy Matter Conversion Corporation (EMC2) was founded in 1985 by the physicist Robert Bussard to develop the Polywell, a fusion device that confines plasma with a polyhedral cusp-shaped magnetic field combined with an electric potential well. With US Navy funding it built a series of test devices; the company says that after Bussard's death in 2007 it demonstrated neutron production in WB-7, and that in 2013, after about 20 devices, it started a high-pressure (high-beta) plasma in a Polywell cusp. It now also markets the Polywell as a compact high-flux neutron source for materials testing and tritium breeding research, and says such a source could yield 1,000 times more neutrons than commercial neutron generators.
- Sector
- Fusion
- Technology
- Electrostatic confinement, Magnetic confinement
- Role
- Fusion developer
Terms
- Electrostatic confinement
- Confinement by electric rather than magnetic fields.
- Magnetic confinement
- Holding a hot plasma away from material walls using magnetic fields, sustained for seconds to steady-state rather than the nanosecond pulses of inertial confinement. The open problem shared by every configuration below is exhausting the plasma's heat and helium ash without eroding the wall that must survive it for years, not seconds.
Related companies
Sources
- A Brief History of EMC2operator
- EMC2 homepageoperator